1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data processing apparatus and a data transmission path. More specifically, the present invention relates to a data processing apparatus of data-driven type.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The Neumann type data processing apparatus has deficiencies such as a low processing speed and a difficulty in parallel processing due to sequential processing. Then, recently, the data-driven type (data-flow type) data processing apparatus has been proposed and realized An example of such a data-driven type data processing apparatus is disclosed, for example, at pages 181 through 218 of the magazine "Nikkei Electronics" issued on Apr. 9, 1984.
In the data-driven type processing apparatus, data flow is not uniform because as processing is performed operands begin to be processed in sequence of firing Then, conventionally a plurality of buffer memories (for example, FIFO memory) and processing elements are connected by a synchronous type bus.
In such a conventional data processing apparatus, the capacity of the FIFO memory depends greatly upon the speed and timing of firing, and therefore it is very difficult to design or select the capacity of this FIFO memory to enable a quite smooth processing. Accordingly, in actuality, such a capacity is designed appropriately in advance, and when the FIFO memory is fully occupied, the entire process is stopped or finished.
On the other hand, in order to avoid such a situation, a special overflow processing mechanism has only to be adopted to control continuation and stop of input for each portions. However, such a processing mechanism is subjected to complication of hardware.